


I am Going to Explain Myself so there won't be Any Misunderstandings

by twitchtipthegnawer



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Classism, Dominant Elijah Jamski, Elijah Kamski & Gavin Reed are Siblings, Handcuffs, Light BDSM, Masochist Gavin Reed, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Really it's more like a Canon Convergence, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-29 03:20:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17800118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: By the time he was ten years old Gavin Reed had gone through two sets of parents and was only sure of one thing; neither had really loved him all that much. But his new brother, Elijah, he was different. Gavin didn't know if he really loved him, but Elijah didn't seem to love anything quite like he loved his experiments. So, that was alright.As long as Gavin was allowed to stay beside the only person who'd ever really paid attention to him, it was alright.





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> A commission from a wonderfully patient person on tumblr who wishes to remain anonymous. The relationship in this fic is pretty fucked, not just because they're adopted siblings and not shy about that. I had a lot of fun writing some of the machinations going on between these fairly immoral characters, but it could be upsetting to some people. Remember: don't like, don't read!

The house looked impossibly big to Gavin at nine years old. Big, and cold, and empty.

“These are your new parents,” said the social worker, pushing him towards a man and woman standing on the front porch. “You should go say hi.”

He looked up at her, then back at the couple. All three wore identical smiles. Big, and cold, and empty.

“Hi, Mom,” Gavin said anyway. “Hi, Dad. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Isn’t he precious?” Cooed his new father, who kneeled down in front of him and held his arms out in a silent request. Gavin tensed, but forced himself forward. The restricted feeling (not being able to  _ move _ ) was horrible, but those arms around him only lasted a moment. As soon as he pulled back, Gavin tried to make eye contact with him.

Instead, he found his new Dad already looking back up at Mom, already standing. The social worker babbled at them about paperwork and a later visit to check up on how he was adjusting. Gavin didn’t pay attention to the specifics; he already knew that this place would be just like home, even if his bedroom was a bit bigger. That wasn’t a good thing. Only a fact.

They led him into the foyer of the house, where they took off his bubble coat and hung it up on a silver hook beside three black jackets that looked ridiculously expensive to him.

Very quickly, he realized he’d been right about the house being empty. There were no servants bustling about (though he’d half expected them), only the soft sound of their socks on the wooden floors and ornate rugs. He was led up one, then two flights of stairs.

“Your bedroom’s right through here,” Mom said, her blue eyes staring straight through him. “On the left, sweetie. And your new brother, Elijah, will be right across the hall. Won’t that be fun?”

“Uh huh,” Gavin agreed, only to have his voice swallowed underneath a crackling sound.

All three of them turned to stare at the closed door to Elijah’s bedroom for a moment. “Our little boy likes to tinker. Maybe you’ll be able to help him out with some of his inventions, since you’re the same age and all,” said Dad.

“Uh huh,” Gavin repeated, and again loud crackles interrupted him. Acrid smoke filled the hall, prompting Mom and Dad to exchange nervous glances.

“I’ll be right back,” Mom said eventually. “Won’t take a moment, I’m just grabbing the fire extinguisher.”

This left Dad to finally open Gavin’s room - and reveal that it was fully furnished. The sports-themed bedspread looked like something out of a magazine, and made Gavin wonder if Elijah had the same one. His lampshade had little stars and his dresser was painted dark blue. “We weren’t sure what you’d like, but we got so excited,” Dad explained. “We just couldn’t wait to go shopping, though of course we can exchange anything you don’t - ”

_ Trills  _ interrupted him now, from his pocket, rather than Elijah’s room. Sighing, Dad pulled it out to grimace at the screen. “This shouldn’t take long,” he muttered to Gavin without looking away. “Why don’t you go greet Elijah? I’m sorry he didn’t come out to meet you with us, but he gets so wrapped up in his projects.”

“Okay,” Gavin said, and Dad was out the door even before Gavin could move. Looking around again, he decided that, yes. This was  _ exactly  _ like home.

Pulling his tiny hands into the sleeves of his holey sweater, Gavin padded into the hallway. Looking right revealed Dad, disappearing back downstairs and loudly declaring to the person on the phone, “What is it, Jim? I’m busy.” Mom wasn’t back yet, and Gavin wondered if he should wait for her.

Another strange sound came from the room across the hall. He eyed the door, which was mysteriously covered in scratches, and decided a peek couldn’t hurt.

He wrapped his hands around the doorknob and pulled. It stuck a bit, but a hard tug got it free and had Gavin stumbling backwards, landing on his butt. He winced, moved to stand up, but then froze as he saw what the room contained.

Twisted metal and exposed wiring,  _ everywhere.  _ Gavin plastered both hands over his mouth but knew he was making a noise, he  _ had _ to be, because he couldn’t breathe inwards at all. He  _ couldn’t move _ \- no, he  _ could, _ he wasn’t trapped in there anymore. In the metal pressing inwards with its harsh edges, digging into his side, blood pooling beneath him only it wasn’t his own -

“Woah, are you okay?” A hand on his shoulder, covered by a glove. Gavin blinked tears out of the way and saw a pair of huge, blue eyes staring directly at him. The brows above them were smudged with soot and downturned with concern. “You’re Gavin, right? What’s wrong with you? You didn’t have asthma written in your file, but those look like bronchospasms.”

“W-what?” Gavin shook his head, and wrenched himself out of the larger boy’s grip.

Elijah (it  _ had _ to be Elijah) followed him out into the hallway and backed him into the wall. Gavin would’ve felt cornered and even more panicked, except… Elijah’s eyes never wavered from his. Gavin held onto the eye contact, even when humiliation flushed in his cheeks.

“Oh,” Elijah breathed, understanding lighting up his face. “That was a panic attack.”

“Shut up,” Gavin snapped. “Why is your room full of all that stuff, anyway?”

“I’m building something,” replied Elijah, seemingly unbothered by Gavin’s tone. “Did you panic because of the car accident?”

“None of your b-business!” Gavin tried to turn around and go back into his new room, but Elijah caught him by the arm.

“Do you want to see?”

Once again, Gavin pulled away, but this time Elijah didn’t let him go. He watched Gavin, really  _ watched _ him, eager for his answer. And that alone made Gavin think twice about it. He could go back to his room, his nice, sterile, safe room full of impersonal touches, and sit alone and think about how little he mattered to either set of his parents, whether or not they were in the ground.

Or he could go back into that den of horrors and feel those blue eyes on him just a little longer.

“Okay.”

It wasn’t so bad the second time around, with warning. The robotics’ pieces hanging off of shelves and piled onto tables didn’t even resemble the insides of a car  _ that _ much. Gavin dug his nails into his palms, barely-scabbed scratches aching.

“This is my newest project! I haven’t picked a name for her yet, but doesn’t she look cool?”

Turning away from where he’d been trying to find Elijah’s bed in the mess, Gavin found himself face to face with a pair of eyes. Pale, blue, staring eyes. Which just so happened to be protruding from an incomplete face, exposed edges of metal and scorched plastics, which twitched periodically as Elijah held it up.

A shudder wracked Gavin so hard that he stumbled backwards, tried to catch himself on a table, and inevitably cut himself on one of the thousands of sharp edges in there. He cried out, clutching his hand to his chest, but the whole time he couldn’t tear his gaze away from those eyes. Lifeless, exposed, round whites melding into a mess of wires. If he looked very carefully, he could tell the irises were like camera lenses.

Almost the exact same shade as Elijah’s eyes.

“Do you like her?” Elijah asked, as though Gavin hadn’t just injured himself in front of him.

“She’s creepy,” retorted Gavin. “Do you have a bandaid?”

Frown pouting up Elijah’s lips, he inspected his creation as though trying to find what Gavin was talking about. “How is she creepy?”

“She’s staring at me. Can you get me a bandaid?”

“...Sorry,” Elijah finally put down the robotic head and began kicking at debris around the base of what Gavin had thought might be a low table, but turned out to be where his bed had been hiding all along. “So, do you think I should change her eyes?”

“What?” Gavin accepted the first aid kit Elijah handed him, but when he opened it he found it full of things he didn’t recognize.

“To make her less creepy, should I change her eyes? Make them look more like cameras? I thought it’d be cool for her to look more human, but I dunno, maybe that’s just me.”

For some reason, Gavin found himself reluctant to agree with that assessment. “Give her eyelids or something,” he mumbled, finally digging a normal band aid out of the kit.

“Hmm.” Kamski looked consideringly between his robot and Gavin a few times. He nearly vibrated with enthusiasm, though Gavin didn’t know why. Truthfully, he never understood much of anything about his new brother, other than that he understood machines better than he understood humans and he saw, really  _ saw _ everything that people generally didn’t pay attention to. Things like cashiers making mistakes on other people’s purchases, or manufacturing errors in the toys they got on christmas.

Things like Gavin.

As the years passed, that never changed. Gavin grew from a withdrawn child into a sullen teenager, but he never took to locking his bedroom door the way boys his age did.

Even when he began coming home to find disembodied robot parts scattered about his room. Even when he woke in the middle of the night to see Elijah sitting on his bed, unblinking, next to his increasingly human-like creations.

It wasn’t like Elijah didn’t know he was being creepy. When Gavin asked him about it, he laughed, and said, “Yeah, but you should see your face when I wake you up like that. The things these robots have recorded… I have a lifetime of blackmail material.”

“Nothing about that was the answer I was fucking looking for,” Gavin had replied, his arms crossed in what he determinedly told himself wasn’t a desperate attempt at self-comfort.

“You need to stop swearing so much, Mom and Dad don’t like it,” Kamski had said. And then he’d hugged Gavin, because he always knew the truth, because he saw straight through Gavin’s bluffs every single time, and because he might be a prick, but he never pushed Gavin away when he needed comfort.

And this was another reason he didn’t lock his door, even when he and Elijah were in middle school and he started having  _ dreams.  _ Even when he woke up sticky with sweat and  _ other  _ things, thinking about his brother with a hand on the back of his head, pushing him closer and closer to that still-unnamed robot’s face. “Kiss her,” Elijah would say, and Gavin would try to squirm away in discomfort, but he wasn’t really  _ trying -  _ and then he would wake up again.

He worried that those dreams were included with the rest of Gavin’s blackmail material. Neither ever brought them up, though, and Gavin considered the stay of execution mostly a relief.

They aged, and it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, but it wasn’t bad. Not until they started high school, and Kamski announced something at the dinner table.

“Mom, Dad, I signed myself up for the ACT and SAT.”

Gavin froze halfway through a bite, but neither of their parents even looked up from their meals. “That’s nice,” said Dad after a moment. “When will you be taking them?”

Though the lack of concern about the fees still tripped Gavin up a bit, he was more preoccupied with the information Elijah imparted next. Information Gavin already knew. “They happened a while ago, Dad. I got the results back today.”

Mom asked, politely interested like she would at a dinner party, “Oh, how did you do?”

“Thirty six on the ACT.” Gavin held his breath. “Sixteen hundred on the SAT.”

“And what does that mean? Honestly, I can’t keep up with how they keep changing the scoring rules these days.”

“Perfect,” Gavin breathed. “That’s perfect.”

He’d known his brother was smart, of course. It was impossible not to when Kamski rubbed it in his face, intentionally and otherwise. The robots alone were a testament to that. It was another thing to be faced with  _ this, _ this tangible (real) consequence, and realize what was coming next in a rare moment of clarity.

“Gavin? Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Young man, if you’re sulking because you’re jealous of your brother - ”

Rather than listen to the end of the lecture, Gavin stomped up the stairs and slammed his door shut. He didn’t lock it, in part because he knew his parents weren’t going to follow him, and in part because…

A polite knock. Gavin didn’t open the door, but Kamski didn’t hesitate to do it himself and sit on the bed beside Gavin.

In part because of this.

“I’m not going away for college,” Kamski soothed him. “At least, not for a little while. I can take all my prerequisites online. I checked.”

“Why do you want to fucking rush things? Every time. You did this when you found out I hadn’t watched porn yet, and last time you had a breakthrough with that machine and stopped eating for a few days - ”

“Do you think I’m leaving you behind?”

There it was, the truth Gavin hadn’t wanted to admit even to himself. “Who would worry about something stupid like that?”

“I would,” Kamski said. Gavin started, found himself staring directly at his brother, no more than an inch away. He’d leaned close as if the near-glowing blue of his gaze wasn’t sincere enough without that proximity, without his breath sending shivers up and down Gavin’s spine.

Words dried up on Gavin’s tongue. Any response he might’ve thought of disappeared into the haze of Elijah mere inches away, until - “Name her.” Kamski said suddenly.

“Huh?” Gavin felt particularly slow and stupid now.

But all Elijah did in response was smile, not mock (for once). “Name my robot. I can’t just call her RT100 forever, and that way she’ll be ours, not just mine.”

_ I’m not rushing on my own _ , Gavin interpreted.  _ I’m grabbing you by the hand and dragging you with me. We’ll rush together. _

“Chloe,” he blurted out, because he couldn’t stop himself from rocking the boat sometimes. Elijah raised an eyebrow; Chloe was the name of a girl in their class Gavin had been accused of having a crush on. But he didn’t argue, and for a little while, Gavin thought that meant Elijah was making good on his promise. Neither was leaving the other behind.

Over the course of the next two years, however, Gavin realized that wasn’t quite true. Because Elijah rocketed through a four year degree in engineering, and befriended a professor, and even started a company with her. And because he rented an apartment in the small town surrounding the University of Colbridge, and invited Gavin to live with him, and revealed that Chloe was nearly completed.

And Gavin wasn’t trying to catch up, because how could he? Elijah was too far ahead for him to ever compare. Elijah wasn’t  _ leaving _ him behind; he had left long ago.

Instead of  _ trying  _ to do something that had always been impossible, Gavin gave up. Colbridge might be the best place in the world to study and develop AI, but it certainly wasn’t a bad place to learn forensic chemistry. And if, at sixteen, Gavin was studying there, he wasn’t doing badly for himself.

At least, that was what he said, lying in bed with a girl named Casey or Kelsey who had asked him why he’d taken Elijah up on that offer.

“He’s just so like, famous around here, you know? I would’ve thought you’d wanna get away from that.”

“And I’m not famous?” Gavin rolled over and caged her between his forearms. Her eyes crinkled with her smile - blue, but too dull. Too close to grey.

“You’re different famous,” she touched his cheek with one perfectly manicured finger. “No one talks about how great Elijah Kamski’s dick is.”

Wrinkling his nose, Gavin did his best to look disgusted. “Don’t talk about him like that.”

“See, that’s what I mean though.” She kissed him, and he kissed back. “You two never talk in public, he doesn’t go to the same parties - or any parties at all. You seem so different, you’ve even got different last names, but you live together. And no one’s even seen your apartment, even though you’d think bragging about  _ us _ could spice up that sibling rivalry a bit. It’s weird.”

_ Weird _ . “Didn’t make you wanna hop on my dick any less.”

She slapped his chest playfully. Perfectly manicured fingers. Too-grey eyes. Gavin caught himself thinking about hands rough with scars and calluses, hands that never  _ needed _ to know hardship but dove into it for the simple love of a thing no one else seemed to care about. Sharp metal, hot wires, dead eyes. The smell of gasoline and ice.

Sibling rivalry was the last thing on Gavin’s mind, and for good reason. This was hammered home when Amanda Stern visited their apartment one day, while Kamski was out. Gavin opened the door to see a stunning woman, her dark skin not marred by the wrinkles which gave away her age, but instead enhanced by them. He swallowed hard and said, “Uh, hello? What do you need?”

She’d replied, “You must be the brother.” Just like that, he’d known who she was. Elijah spent more time around her than he did around Gavin these days, even though Gavin had moved in with him in a desperate attempt to… he wasn’t sure.

“Dr. Stern, did you want Elijah? He’s gone, so - ”

“I know. But I came to deliver this.” She stepped aside to allow a wheeled suitcase to glide forward, the giant, black thing taking up a surprising amount of the hallway. “He wanted to get the RT200 done this weekend, and I don’t enjoy having to unlock my office at his whim.”

“Okay, I’ll just… ”

But when Gavin tried to pull the suitcase into the entryway, her hand shot out to grasp his wrist.

“You know who I am.”

Even though it wasn’t a question, Gavin said, “Yes?” When he tried to pull back, her nails bit into his skin.  _ Restraining. _

“You know, your brother talks about you, too,” she said calmly. “About how you came to live with him. I believe, in fact, that part of his preoccupation with the psychology of prototype AI is due to your own trauma.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gavin spat, playing the dumb card.

Fortunately or not, she bought it. Her lip curled in a sneer when she released him. “What did you hope to achieve, following after him like a lost puppy? You have a perfectly good set of parents you’ve all but abandoned, and for what? To distract your brother from what we’re supposed to be creating?”

Swallowing hard, Gavin forced himself to meet her eyes. Dark, dark, dark eyes. He could see himself reflected in them, and though he knew she was looking at him, it didn’t feel like a gaze. It felt like a mirror.

“What are you  _ supposed _ to be creating, then? AI seems pretty, I dunno, profitable.”

Amanda Stern tutted, which in Gavin’s opinion was just the pretentious version of a snort. “Workers, little Gavin. Mindless workers. Who won’t unionize and ask for rights or higher wages when they inevitably become fed up with their lot in life. Who won’t go on strike when they decide they can squeeze their employers for more, and more, and more.”

To his surprise, there was a fair amount of venom in her tone by the end of that little speech. He nodded, mutely, and she walked away from what had seemed until then to be a safe haven for him and Elijah. Sure, it often felt too big and too empty despite being so much smaller than his parents’ house, but it also felt  _ safe. _ Gavin supposed part of that was the fact that his brother had stopped hiding dismembered robot parts around his room, but the point stood.

Something about what Amanda had said made the place feel...  _ less _ safe. The motorized suitcase sat next to their coffee table, which held a photo album Mom had given them a while ago. It looked, to Gavin, like a time bomb. One large enough to hold a human.

It had been so long since he’d seen Elijah’s progress in real life, though his brother still asked for his opinion on occasion. One peek couldn’t hurt…

There was a combination required to open the suitcase, though. Only four digits, and Amanda’s words were digging into Gavin’s mind.

Elijah cared about him. The fact that Amanda agreed with this did nothing to make Gavin feel less like he was losing his brother to those robots, but it  _ did _ plant a thought in Gavin’s mind. Backhanded as it had been, when she’d said it.

_ One-zero-zero-seven. _

_ Click. _

A moment of victory was cut short by the sight of blue eyes staring up at Gavin, sightless, like those of a dead body. He stumbled away from the suitcase, landed on the couch when the backs of his knees slammed into it. But he didn’t start hyperventilating, of course not, he wasn’t nine anymore.

She was naked, but the barbie-doll nudity didn’t bother Gavin. She didn’t look human, but he’d expected that too, hadn’t he? Places at her joints where the white, flexible plastic coating her pinched inwards or bulged out unnaturally. Tiny exposed lines of blue tubing and silver metal. More human than any of Elijah’s past attempts, maybe, but still not passable. Not yet.

It wasn’t the blonde hair coming out of her head (the real Chloe had been a redhead; did Elijah remember?) or the cupid’s bow of her lips or the coldness pouring off of her like the inside of the suitcase had been refrigerated. None of that was what caused Gavin to fall, or shake, or stare like looking away would cause him physical pain.

Her eyes.

_ Dead  _ eyes.

_ Elijah’s eyes. _

Next Gavin knew, he was on his knees and his knuckles ached fiercely. There was a huge dent in the android’s chest, the edges leaking blue to match the red blood smeared on white chassis. It looked… kind of organic, almost. Enough to make Gavin queasy.

Enough to make him swing again.

He knew he was destroying Elijah’s work, knew it was stupid, that this wasn’t as simple as them melting her down and reassembling her. The wetware was already malfunctioning without a sufficient blood substitute, to harm it like this could spell the end of the android.

But still he stuck his fingers into the edges and pulled, listened to the crackle of electricity trying desperately to bridge the gap he was creating. He burned his fingertips on it, and pulled harder.

_ Some part of her is trying to live, _ Gavin thought, more than a bit insanely.  _ And I can’t let her. _

Squelching and squealing like a tortured pig.  _ Too alive. Too alive. _ He got to the core of her, beat it until the plastic covering cracked and fluid poured in, blue smoke pluming upwards. She was definitely fried, but still, he looked for ways to break her. To break Chloe.

His eyes landed on her hands. He took a finger, squeezed it. Too soft to be flesh, too silky-smooth, but not enough give either. There was no bone in there, just plastic and plastic and plastic and -

Someone grabbed Gavin’s hand. He froze - he’d been breaking Chloe’s fingers, he realized - and looked up with wide eyes. His eyesight was blurred. When had he begun crying?

“Gavin? What’s wrong?”

Something swam into view. An island of stillness in the storm. Something… blue.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin whispered. “Elijah, I’m sorry.”

He’d been doing so well, hadn’t he? Living his own life, getting his own degree. His own group of friends. Keeping busy, even if he’d seen his brother less often, even if he hadn’t spoken to his parents in months. They’d never been close with him, had they? And Elijah had always been strange, been hard to understand, this wasn’t new.

Yet, Gavin had never cried in front of his brother before. Seven years of being by his side, and Elijah had  _ never seen him cry. _ The expression on his face, seeing it now, was strange. Scrunched half like Gavin was a very hard puzzle he’d been most of the way to solving, and now he was stumped. But also, half like he was trying not to smile.

Calloused hands jumped from Gavin’s bloody fingers to his cheek. The touch was gentler than anyone Gavin had slept with, but it was also more impersonal. Somehow, that was what he wanted right now.

“It’s okay,” Elijah said. “We can rebuild her.”

_ We. _

That one little word got Gavin to stand, to follow Elijah into his room. It got him to lie down, and fall asleep with Elijah still stroking his hair, and not feel even a bit tense at the thought of cameras or eyes watching him.

They did rebuild her, together. Elijah told Amanda - something, some lie Gavin didn’t ask for the particulars of, and more and more brought the pieces home to work on together. To Gavin’s delight, Elijah  _ did  _ need him. The wetware and mechanical components were so often hard to integrate together, but pure electronics were too energy intensive to function on their own.

And so Gavin provided every bit of his chemistry expertise he could, and Elijah actually looked pleasantly shocked to see the contributions have Chloe 2.0 moving more smoothly. The “skin” covering her still bunched poorly - but when Gavin suggested scrapping the covering entirely and using a screen as the chassis instead, the effect was much more lifelike.

“But if you touch her, especially her joints, there’s a risk the user could get hurt,” Elijah said with a frown.

“I thought they were supposed to be like, factory workers mostly?”

“And home aids. The more versatile we can make them, the more funding we’ll get for improvements and refinement.”

“In that case, maybe we should just give them gloves…”

Thus, they continued. Back and forth, like  _ real _ partners. Gavin got drunk less, smoked less. He got to tease Kamski about the copious amounts of coffee he’d taken to drinking, and got to make him laugh when Gavin wrinkled his nose at the offer to share. He hadn’t even known his brother had graduated from energy drinks, and this new closeness meant he started sleeping around less, too.

His seventeenth birthday found him at a houseparty, drunk but not slurring, high enough to relax but not so much he couldn’t focus. He was talking to a guy named Noah, some smartass who shared half his classes and had been getting the highest grades in the major until Elijah had begun asking for Gavin’s help.

Sparring verbally wasn’t something Gavin did much; he didn’t often feel like he could  _ win.  _ But Noah had started it, and Gavin hadn’t stopped him, and, well. It was fun.

“What even happened to you, kiddo,” Noah leaned in close, and his breath smelled like four-loko and illicit promises. “You went from some punky kid coming outta nowhere to a big-shot overnight, it feels like.”

“Punky kid?” Gavin had to stand on his tip-toes to meet Noah’s gaze, but he didn’t mind. “Just cause I’m younger doesn’t mean I was playing catch up, old man. Which one of us slept his way through the TAs, again?”

“Hey, just cause I’m older doesn’t mean I’ve got less game.” Noah put a hand on the wall by Gavin’s shoulders, caged him in. Stopped him from being able to dodge to the side, and Gavin shivered at that thought.

Noah had green eyes, which Gavin didn’t particularly like, but he had hands rough from small chemical burns and working on a classic car he was ridiculously proud of (he bragged at every opportunity). So, winding his fingers through blond hair, Gavin pulled Noah’s ear to his mouth and murmured, “Wanna get out of here?”

Ordinarily, he would’ve allowed Noah to drag him to his frat house or dorm room or apartment. Ordinarily, however, he wasn’t coming down from the high of almost being an adult. The high of Chloe (now RT300) almost being completed. The high of Elijah wishing him happy birthday in a sleep-gruff voice this morning, before he disappeared into his room for a full day of coding, as he was wont to do sometimes.

Elijah was definitely,  _ definitely _ home right now. Not listening to music, because as much as he liked classical, he did his best work in dead silence. No distractions.

Tonight wasn’t an ordinary night, but  _ Gavin _ was the one who made it unusual, when he took Noah’s hand and dragged him to his shared apartment.

Tumbling through the door with a tongue already down his throat, Gavin moaned noisily. Backing into his room took some coordination, but Gavin could’ve done it with hands down the  _ front  _ of his pants, not just groping his ass. He knew every vial of Thirium 223 and discarded computer chip scattered through the room.

Noah kicked his bedroom door shut when Gavin led him through it, but this didn’t matter. There was a whole living room between his and Kamski’s rooms, but that didn’t matter, either. When Noah shoved him to the bed and gripped both his wrists in one strong, rough hand, Gavin arched his back and keened prettily.

“You sound like such a  _ whore,” _ Noah panted against his sweat-slick skin.

“Thank you,” Gavin said. Noah bit the snarky grin right off his lips.

Ordinarily, Gavin wasn’t particularly loud during sex. That night, when he came, he  _ screamed.  _ Afterwards he lay in bed, Noah’s hand lazily tracing circles around his navel, and smirked when a knock came on his door. “Gimme a second,” he called, getting up slowly.

“I didn’t hear your brother get home,” Noah said, a light blush gracing his cheeks.

With a look over his shoulder, Gavin said, “He was probably here the whole time.”

Awed and appalled, Noah said, “You’re actually shameless.”

All Gavin did was wink and open the door, coyly hiding his nakedness around the corner of it. Still, Elijah only needed to glance at him to see how his dark hair was in disarray and his lips had been kissed puffy. To Gavin’s surprise, Elijah actually blushed a bit himself, and averted his gaze. Elijah was probably the only person on the planet whose regard Gavin could feel like a physical touch on his skin, even when his brother was so overwhelmed he couldn’t look directly at him.

It was a strange kind of power Gavin felt then.

“When you’re done getting cleaned up,” Elijah said stiffly. “I’ve got some new blueprints I wanna show you.”

“Sure thing.” Gavin made sure to keep his voice a bit breathless, and had the pleasure of seeing Elijah bring one hand up to rub at his own mouth.

Once Gavin had showered and Noah had left (with a sheepish nod to Kamski on the way out), however, he found that  _ he  _ was the one flushing in embarrassment.

“We can’t make this out of wetware,” he said, clearing his throat to stop his voice from breaking. “We haven’t been able to make any of it, uh,  _ not _ unsettling enough to be, like, super creepy. Also, why are you adding this?”

“The more versatile we can make them, the more funding we’ll get for improvements and refinement,” Elijah repeated. “And the sex doll industry is willing to shell out like nothing else.”

For a split second, Gavin wondered if maybe he’d talked in his sleep when he was younger. If Elijah had ever heard those dreams, a grip forcing him closer and closer to that android. But he shook it off, and forced a smile, and said, “We’ll have to find a way to cram lube storage next to the gyroscope, then. And probably a self cleaning mechanism, too.”

Diving head-first into the work certainly helped Gavin to avoid thinking about things he should’ve let die long ago. He was hitting a roadblock, though, even as they came up with more and more ways to make Chloe lifelike.

“She’s just not learning fast enough,” he said, his frown matching Elijah’s exactly, though the bags under his eyes were less pronounced. “And her wetware requires replacing way too often to make any more of her out of it, but as it is…”

“Yeah,” Elijah agreed. “There’s still too much the mechanics just  _ can’t _ do right. We’ll get it though, you’ll see.”

Except a full year passed, and they  _ didn’t  _ get it yet. They went from RT400, which nearly took Gavin’s finger off when he checked to see if the movement inside her pussy was realistic enough, to RT401, who actually got Amanda to smack Elijah across the face when he presented her. RT403 was such a pain in the ass to work with that Gavin found himself falling asleep in Elijah’s room while he waited for the next batch of bug fixes to be finished up. He hadn’t meant to, but the smell in there was comforting - oil, sweat, ozone and copper.

His dreams were interrupted by Elijah jostling his shoulder. Blinking away foggy memories of himself bleeding red crystals, Gavin found himself staring into Elijah’s practically glowing face. His smile was near manic, and Gavin found himself covered in goosebumps.

“I’ve got it, Gavin,” Elijah said. He urged his brother to stand with a hand on his bicep, then led him, stumbling, to the bed. “I figured it out, here, just, lay down.”

In his half asleep state, Gavin almost obeyed. It wasn’t until he saw Chloe, lying inhumanly still, blinking up at him, that he woke up the rest of the way.

“Woah!” Wheeling backwards, he almost fell. Elijah managed to catch him just in time. They both stumbled, and then Gavin was grabbing onto his brother’s shirt, somewhat desperately. “What are you doing?”

“Testing her,” Elijah mumbled. “We need to test her.”

“Testing her…” Gavin swallowed. “Sexual functions?”

“Yes,” Elijah pushed Gavin’s shoulders. “Come on now, come on.”

Oddly, terror closed off Gavin’s throat. More oddly, Gavin obeyed.

As he laid beside Chloe, and felt her stutter-stop movements turn to face him, he wondered to himself  _ why.  _ The answer came in the form of remembering Elijah’s face, overwhelmed at the sight of Gavin fucked out. The answer came in the form of cupping Chloe’s breast and feeling it give under his fingers, in the form of his same fingers breaking her open and building her anew with Elijah watching on approvingly.

Since the android was already nude, Gavin focused on stripping himself. She petted his chest, weird, jerky fingers trying to tease his nipples. They pinched too hard, made him wince, and he heard Elijah’s breath catch.

Skin prickling, Gavin turned to look at Elijah. He was  _ watching  _ him, really looking the way few other people did. Noah hadn’t noticed when Gavin had faked pleasure for his brother’s benefit. Elijah would. Gavin didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing, as his cock slowly hardened under that heavy gaze.

So, instead of thinking about it more, he kissed Chloe.

Her tongue made his tingle, electricity overflow he hadn’t noticed without spit slicking the way. It was a good thing he was drooling so much, as well; they hadn’t gotten around to saliva gland analogues yet. But all these notes were background to the constant mantra in his head, the  _ what am I doing  _ and  _ this feels too good. _

Because it  _ did  _ feel too good. She was clumsy, wrapping fingers too loose around his dick and pumping too fast. When he covered her hand with his and showed her what to do, she adjusted, but slowly. Too slowly. And still there was a sense of  _ I did this, we did this, Elijah did this with me.  _ “You’re very big,” Chloe said in a sweet voice which Elijah had programmed from scratch.

_ “You’re never gonna find a voice actress,” Gavin had said. _

_ Rubbing his hands over his cheeks, Elijah had given his brother a tired look. “Well, I can’t code accurate human inflection without  _ something _ to base it on.” _

_ “Why not?” Gavin had asked, and that had been all the challenge Elijah needed. _

Gavin’s moan had very little to do with her dirty talk, but it was sincere all the same. He brought his fingers to her pussy, and the gentle, pulsating warmth was nothing like the real thing. It was better. Elijah made a choking sound, causing Gavin to flicker his eyes open, but all he could see was Chloe, watching his every reaction, assessing and adjusting in accordance with her findings. The exact same blue eyes as Elijah.

Someone trailed fingertips down his spine, got him to press flush to Chloe’s too-hot body (he could actually hear the whirr of her fluids cycling through, trying desperately to keep her cool). He tried to see if it was her, but the hand on his cock was making focus kind of difficult.

“Gavin,” she said, making him shiver. “I want you inside me. Please, your fingers are very nice, but they aren’t enough.”

Helpless, Gavin did as she said, allowing her to wrap her legs around his hips and sinking his cock into that tight, wet warmth. He found himself having to hang onto her waist with both arms, embarrassingly close to overwhelmed. Elijah touched his hair - it  _ had  _ to be Elijah, he would know that feeling anywhere - and then took Chloe’s hand from where it had been stroking his back. Gavin didn’t protest, not even when he heard a wet sound to the side.

He  _ did  _ whip his head around from where he’d had it buried in Chloe’s neck  _ (sweat and oil and copper and ozone) _ to see Elijah licking her fingers. His tongue wrapped dexterously around each slender digit, and Gavin’s breath caught. “I thought you didn’t have much experience,” he said, and it sounded so much less teasing than he’d meant it to.

Elijah paused, perhaps because he’d expected Gavin to ask what he was doing, and stared. “Just because I don’t brag about my liaisons doesn’t mean I haven’t experimented,” he said, releasing Chloe’s wrist and allowing her to trail her spit-slick hand over Gavin’s thigh.

“But you’ve never had a g-girlfriend.” Gavin ignored the way his voice caught as Chloe squeezed his ass. Was it his imagination, or was Elijah watching with more than clinical interest? Certainly his breathing had deepened, but Gavin didn’t dare look between his legs, at those grey sweatpants that had been hanging so low on his hips…

“Or a boyfriend.” Elijah agreed, snapping Gavin out of his thoughts. Chloe pressed a slick finger against his entrance. “But one hardly needs be in a relationship in order to  _ enjoy _ oneself. Isn’t that right,  _ little brother?” _

_ “Hnn, _ I-I, you’re only older by th-three months,” Gavin fell back on the old argument, to avoid the implications of what Kamski was saying. What he was  _ (they were) _ doing.

For the first time in a long time, Elijah didn’t let him. “I know what you sound like when you feel good,” Elijah whispered, leaning down until his breath ghosted over Gavin’s ear. He felt it so much  _ more  _ than he had when Noah, or anyone else, had tried the same thing. “You don’t sound like some cheap actor in a porno. You sound like  _ this.” _

_ Overwhelming.  _ All of it - Chloe’s chest, soft and gentle swell of quivering silicone, which rose and fell with each of her breaths. The pink of her nipples and her pussy, hairless still (because they hadn’t quite gotten the hair on her head  _ right _ yet, and so she was left bare) with full outer lips so plush he barely felt the impact as she encouraged his hips to rock. Elijah looming over him, and Gavin wondered if he trimmed or shaved his own treasure trail - and abruptly realized he must, since Elijah was a pussycat when it came to grooming.

Beside them, like  _ this, _ Gavin didn’t feel powerful. He didn’t feel sexy. He felt unkempt and weak and inexperienced and, and, and.

Whether or not it was a good idea, Gavin had a tendency to lash out when he felt vulnerable. If avoiding hadn’t worked out, then why not?

Elijah already knew this. There was no surprise when Gavin’s hips bucked, coaxing a sweet, happy sound from Chloe’s throat, nor when Gavin gave a whorish moan when she fucked him with her finger. So, Gavin said, “If you know so much, why am I still  _ thinking.” _

No response. Gavin rocked his hips again; if he stuttered when Chloe crooked her finger, it wasn’t obvious. He couldn’t watch Elijah for reactions, not properly, so when he felt the bed move he didn’t know what to expect.

Gently, almost painfully so, Chloe twined her fingers through his. He hadn’t realized how white-knuckled his grip on the bedsheets had gotten before she coaxed it loose. For a moment, he wondered if she was picking up on his tension, or if she was simply supposed to behave softly and intimately.

Neither, as it turned out.

Metal closed around his wrist with a quiet  _ snick.  _ Jerking, Gavin actually pulled out of Chloe and wheeled halfway around to find out what the  _ fuck _ was happening. But before he could make a sound, Elijah had captured his other hand, and Gavin was handcuffed.

Handcuffed, as in he  _ couldn’t move.  _ When he tried, sharp edges dug into his skin and they  _ hurt.  _ Not badly, but still, Gavin gaped wordless and betrayed at Elijah.

Jaw set in a way Gavin had never seen it before, Elijah said, “Okay. If you want me to, okay.”

“W-want? I didn’t ask you to handcuff - hey!”

Elijah grabbed the back of his head, and Gavin thought he didn’t like where this was going, even as his dick was too cold and Chloe smiled at him in the unnerving, disjointed way she had.

Being forced to kiss Chloe was so different. Gavin couldn’t do anything but let his mouth hang open, and she all but plundered him. Her fingers had long dried by then, but this only meant that they burned when she forced them in and out of his body, and even that was good. It felt less like he was being taken apart due to his own incompetence, more like the two people with hands on him were simply too skilled to compete with.

One. One person.

“Wait,” Gavin panted, only to find Elijah’s hand pulling back his hair, forcing him to bare his throat for Chloe’s teeth. He was caught between them, if only Elijah would lean down he’d be able to feel if his brother was affected by this, at all, please, just a -

“If you want me to stop, say so clearly.” Elijah ordered. Gavin shivered and whined, unintentional, embarrassing. “Otherwise, we will continue, at the pace I set. We can test Chloe’s abilities in more sedate settings  _ later.” _

There was a lot to unpack there, and not much Gavin could truly understand, distracted as he was. Chloe and Elijah each grabbed one of his hips, forcing a brutal pace that had his legs shaking as he tried to keep up. Of course, he didn’t fight them. Although his wrists hurt and he couldn’t touch Chloe the way he usually touched his partners, although he was sweating and his neck was definitely bruised, he didn’t fight.

The handcuffs helped, and even though Gavin hated it, heat coiled in his belly faster and faster. Chloe was a furnace around and against him, his cock almost painfully warm and wet was slicking down his own thighs from where it leaked out of her and, when she bit his ear, he realized he was a bit lightheaded.

Not that he could’ve asked them to go slower, even if he’d wanted to. Breath was hard to come by. Elijah slipped a pair of fingers into Gavin’s mouth, and the feeling of calluses on his tongue had his eyes rolling back. Even then, he didn’t see black, just blue. Endless blue.

Of course he couldn’t last long, considering all of that. When he came he collapsed on top of Chloe, not that it bothered her, and gasped near silently. All the pleasure inside him seemed like it’d just reached maximum capacity, and as it ebbed he felt the aches and pains in his muscles more acutely than ever. He’d even cried a couple of tears, but Chloe wiped them away with one thumb before he could consider them.

Disentangling himself, Gavin avoided looking directly at Elijah, and Elijah let him. He did hold his wrists out, wordlessly asking Elijah to take them off.

And, wordlessly, Elijah complied. It was strange and heavy in the room. Gavin felt sticky, too much so to cross his arms like he normally would’ve, so he settled for fisting his hands in the sheets and staring down at the carpeting.

Chloe sat up and leaned against the wall behind him. The hair on the back of his neck prickled with her gaze, but he couldn’t feel Elijah looking at him at all.

“Would you like to shower?” Chloe asked mildly. “I can come with you. I’d be happy to help.”

“I can do it by myself,” Gavin replied, standing abruptly.

Too abruptly, it turned out, as his knees promptly buckled and Elijah had to rush to catch him. Gavin pushed him away, not liking the fact that he was utterly nude and Elijah hadn’t undressed at all. Not liking the way his hands burned Gavin’s skin wherever they touched. Elijah let him, and the two of them stood only a few feet away from one another, breathing too hard.

“Gavin, I - ”

“I’m gonna shower,” Gavin interrupted. He wasn’t sure anything Elijah said could help right now. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t break down and beg his brother to fuck him if he stayed and listened. He wasn’t sure of anything, so he rushed to their tiny bathroom, turned the water burning hot and sat in the bottom of the tub before he let his brain get a word in edgewise.

When he finally calmed enough to consider things, his first coherent thought was,  _ Why didn’t Elijah ask Mom and Dad to pay for the apartment, again? The penthouse has better ventilation and this thing is so fuckin’ steamy already I think I’m gonna pass out when I stand again. _

He snorted at himself, then blew his nose and sternly told himself the water on his face was all from the shower. And then, finally, he thought. He thought about dreams. He thought about how much he’d wanted Elijah, since before he really knew what wanting was, and about how Elijah apparently wanted him back. If not as a boyfriend (and they’d have to be so secretive if they went down that route, could it ever be worth it?) then at least as a test subject.

_ Test subject _ sounded too ugly, even. Elijah  _ loved _ his test subjects, like he loved no one else. Gavin had wanted to be involved, had proven himself useful in other areas already, so would this one other area be so bad to indulge in? They’d both get something out of it.

Even as Gavin was considering this, though, he realized he needed to think about other things with… less pleasant implications. Things like Elijah spying on him, and never telling him he’d seen those  _ dreams,  _ but recognizing what turned Gavin on even better than he himself did. Things like his browser history and how easily Elijah could’ve invaded his privacy in that way, too. Things like Elijah walking around in just a towel after his showers or dragging Gavin to the pool even though Gavin hardly ever swam.

Things like how Elijah  _ saw _ Gavin better than any other human on the planet, and to think any of his actions had been coincidences or accidents had been really fucking stupid. Gavin didn’t like Elijah because Elijah had manipulated him - but Elijah  _ had _ manipulated him, and Gavin  _ still _ liked him. And worse than that, Gavin felt not the least bit inclined to put a stop to this.

_ “We can test Chloe’s abilities in more sedate settings later.” _ Gavin should’ve marched out there and told Elijah there would be no next time. Gavin should’ve marched out there and never looked at him again.

Instead, Gavin avoided Elijah for a week, and made an appointment with a tattoo parlor he knew his parents wouldn’t have approved of. Not one of the four of them.

Detroit may have been somewhat revitalized when it became the central location of android development in the world, but there were still plenty of places in it that Elijah would never fully understand the way Gavin could. He might’ve been only nine when the car accident had happened, but he still remembered how it felt to be hungry all the time, and he saw it reflected in the eyes of men and women sitting on the edge of the street he walked along.

_ Tiger Shark Tattoos’  _ entrance was down a very narrow set of steps on the side of a building which boasted a sandwich shop in the front. Gavin descended down, listening to the sound of dripping water all the way, and thought about how he couldn’t undo this.

The basement was well-lit and cleaner than expected, but the man behind the front counter looked exactly like his gruff voice had sounded on the phone. Full beard, shaved head, and a series of technologically-themed tattoos over his scalp and one arm possibly intended to make it look like he was an android with skin peeled off. Gavin only barely managed to replace his amused look with a gruff one.

“Mister Sendak,” Gavin started. “I’m Gavin Reed. I have an appointment.”

“Call me John. I remember you, come with me,” the tattoo artist grunted.

Discussing fonts took almost no time at all. Gavin pulled off his shirt, let the place just below the left side of his collarbone be shaved and disinfected.

John Sendak darted Gavin mostly disinterested glances between bouts of mildly burning pain from his needle. He asked, clearly a wrote question to keep clients relaxed, “What’s it mean?”

“It’s a message for my brother,” Gavin said, trying the words out on his tongue. They tasted so good he couldn’t help is salacious grin, even when Sendak grimaced at him.

Good old Detroit. The comment didn’t even merit surprise, and Gavin was on his way out only an hour and a half later. He stopped for a turkey sub on the way, and happily munched all the way home.

Arriving wasn’t simple, but Gavin had never thought it would be. He found Elijah on the couch, his hands clasped together and his leg bouncing in a very rare display of anxiety. Crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway, Gavin waited. His smirk only grew as Elijah began to speak. His tone was about as far from his usual swagger as possible.

“I know that I overstepped last week. I haven’t yet properly apologized for that, so I will now. I thought that, given your enthusiasm for solving the puzzle of all of Chloe’s functions, including the sexual ones, a prior conversation wouldn’t be necessary. I’m sorry, this was an oversight I should’ve known better than, especially considering - as you now know - I have been involved in the BDSM community in the past and personally subscribe to - um. What are you doing?”

What Gavin was doing was taking his shirt off. Elijah gaped, seemed unsure if he was allowed to look for a moment, and then gave in. The moment he understood what he was seeing, a flush washed over his cheeks like watercolor blooming over damp paper.

RT500. A brand Kamski could never take back. If he’d helped make Gavin into who he was, he would need to take responsibility.

The kiss he laid onto Gavin, hungry and desperate and utterly without pretense, seemed to imply that he would.


	2. The End

Peaceful times might’ve been short lived in Gavin’s experience, but he particularly enjoyed this one. And not just because it involved him getting laid frequently, with the same pair of partners each time. They learned to read his body incredibly quickly; of course they did, since Chloe was made for it, and Elijah was Elijah.

No, he also enjoyed it because he felt revitalized. Like a gauze he hadn’t realized separated him from the rest of the world had finally been removed. Each touch was more vivid, each equation easily solved beneath his scrutiny. While before he would’ve been frustrated with the realization that Chloe’s current incarnation could never be sold without exorbitant pricing, now he just told himself, “RT600 will be the one. I know it.”

As though the words themselves were a magic charm, he was right.

“Thirium 310!” He exclaimed, accidentally waking Elijah up from his slumped-over position on the coffee table.

“What? Gavin?”

“I’ve got it!” He was unable to feel guilty with the wave of victory washing through him. “A way to stop the biocomponents from degrading so quickly!”

Thrusting his stack of papers at Elijah, Gavin only barely stopped himself from hopping from foot to foot in excitement. He’d had no coffee, nor even soda. He was mostly running on passion and sleep deprivation at this point. However, Elijah read, and the same light lit inside him.

“This’ll work. With the new coolant - this’ll work.” He smiled, and it was too beautiful for Gavin to resist. How many people had seen that smile? Gavin thought he might be the only one.

It didn’t matter that Elijah dropped the papers to the floor in favor of flinging his arms around Gavin. The information was in Elijah’s mind now, and Gavin had never known him to forget even the most minute detail.

Of course, things weren’t as simple as all that. The thirium now had to replace the rudimentary nervous system they’d put in place, meaning it had to receive and deliver information as well as providing wetware with oxygen and nutrients. It  _ could _ do it, though. All that and more, and Gavin was proud as hell even fourteen months into building the “sixth” Chloe.

“Did Amanda wonder about her name?” Gavin asked between bites of his microwaved lasagna.

“Huh?” Elijah had barely touched his own food, he was so absorbed with the laptop he clicked away on. Chloe sat beside him, placidly interfacing with the computer while he rewrote parts of her. “Oh, the numbering? Nah, she assumed you broke another one, I think.”

“Another one? You told her about the  _ last _ one?”

Chills ran down Gavin’s spine, an unpleasant premonition. Elijah seemed abruptly chagrined. “Not much gets past Amanda, so even though I didn’t explain it she figured it out. Sorry.”

“Oh,” Gavin looked down at his suddenly unappetizing food.

‘Hey, come here.”

Kisses didn’t make everything better, but they certainly warmed and settled Gavin. And each time he accepted Elijah into his body, tongue or fingers or cock, he felt calmer somewhere deep down.  _ Especially _ when he brought the RT600 prototype body home, and stopped working on RT403, and began to write speeches for the press circuit.

And then Chloe passed the Turing test.

Not going with Kamski to Cyberlife’s new headquarters, or news stations, or meetings with Amanda, had felt like independence when Gavin was eighteen. It had felt like privacy and comfort. Now, it brought back those chills in full force.

Because his name appeared in none of the promotional materials, none of the coverage, and he was starting to fear what he’d see if he looked through his fledgeling company’s chemistry files. Staring down at the phone in his limp hand, he contemplated calling Elijah. If he didn’t do it now, he wouldn’t be able to for a couple of days. Elijah was too busy.

Chloe moved like a ghost through the apartment, but everything else was so still that Gavin wasn’t caught off guard when she put her hand on his forearm. “I am sure there’s a logical explanation,” she told him softly.

Tightening his grip on the phone, Gavin said, “Humans aren’t like you, we don’t follow  _ logic.” _

The cracked screen weakly reflected Chloe’s upturned lips. She never looked truly neutral, only wavered between curiosity and pleasantness. “I know, but Elijah often follows my rules more than he does yours. Would you like to come to bed? I can give you a massage.”

“Did he program you with that feature, too?”

“Yes. Platonic affection can be as effective as sexual pleasure in releasing tension.”

With a derisive snort, Gavin followed her and obediently lay on his belly. She dug the heels of her palms under his shoulder blades, twin aches blooming dully as she worked. “Does it bother you?” He asked eventually, “That there’s another Chloe out there, being drooled over by rich assholes and doing backflips and shit?”

“No,” answered Chloe simply.

“Why?”

“Because I trust that you and Elijah made the right choice in not mass producing my model, though I’ve not been given the raw data necessary to come to that conclusion myself. And because I trust that you and Elijah made the right choice in not retiring me when you realized I wasn’t financially viable, and instead kept me as a research subject. And because it is not unpleasant, staying here, where it is quiet.”

That final expression of opinion gave Gavin pause; he wasn’t sure how far Elijah had refined her “personality” before moving on to the newer version. And so, probing a bit, he asked another question. “Would you go with him, if he asked you to?”

“Of course.”

“Would you want to?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

This got Gavin to crack a smirk, and sardonic as it was, it managed to be sincere. Slowly, she worked the knots out of his back, and he hoped and hoped and hoped it would be enough.

For a while, it was.

Elijah stumbled through the door late one night, and effectively shattered the fragile peace Gavin had built up inside himself.

“Baby brother,” he drawled, letters drown out long and smooth like drags from an e-cig.

Only half paying attention, Gavin didn’t immediately notice that something was wrong. He looked up from his homework, and despite everything, smiled sincerely to see his brother happy and home. “You’re back early,” he said warmly. “What’s up?”

Swaying like he was caught in a tide only he could feel, Elijah stepped closer. “I wanted to be with you,” he said. “I missed you.” This declaration was surprising enough that Gavin opened his mouth to respond and found he had nothing to say. Elijah decided that this was an invitation for a kiss, and while it was wetter and sloppier than their usual, it wasn’t unpleasant.

“Are you drunk?” Gavin asked, Elijah’s hands already in his hair. He’d grabbed onto Elijah’s shirt halfway through the kiss, and used the proximity now to inspect his cheeks. Strangely, he didn’t look flushed.

“No,” Elijah giggled. Giggled! “Not drunk.”

Part of Gavin wanted to find out exactly what substances Elijah was currently on, if any, and if he was sober how long it had been since he’d slept.  _ And eaten,  _ Gavin thought to himself, feeling how his brother’s waist was slimmer than it had been. But that part of Gavin, the  _ moral _ part, was easily overshadowed by the part that wanted to let Elijah have his own way. The lonely part.

They didn’t even make it to the bedroom, this time. Chloe found them on the couch, with Elijah kissing his way down Gavin’s body and pushing his hoodie up impatiently, clumsily. “Would you like me to join?” She asked, as though nothing out of the ordinary was occuring. Gavin wondered if Elijah had programmed her to know about the complexities of consent. And then he nodded and held his hand out to her.

She took it, followed his lead until he could murmur into her ear, “Make him feel good.” Elijah seemed not to notice, too busy nuzzling Gavin’s treasure trail and making a strange, soft sound. Chloe deftly moved to undo Elijah’s pants and slide them down far enough to free him, but he hardly made it easy on her, shifting around seemingly at random.

“Beautiful,” Elijah whispered to Gavin’s belly button. The hot air on his skin had his hips twitching. “You’re the most beautiful thing I could’ve hoped to build.” Elijah punctuated his praise by firmly mouthing over the bulge in Gavin’s pants. For his part, Gavin bit down on his knuckles and tried not to think too much about what Elijah meant.

Very quickly, Elijah had pulled Gavin’s jeans open and soaked through his boxers with saliva. It was uncomfortable, but at the same time sticky and filthy and everything Gavin loved. He looked down at Elijah with watering eyes, and saw that by now his cheeks  _ were  _ rather flushed. His pupils were blown wide too, with lust or drugs (Gavin wasn’t sure). “Come on,” Gavin said, when the eye contact became uncomfortable. When it felt like Elijah was looking  _ too _ deep. “Don’t make me wait forever.”

Flashing his teeth in a broad, sharklike, completely uncharacteristic grin, Elijah wordlessly pulled Gavin’s cock free, and sank down onto it in a single, smooth movement.

“Hhhhhhhfuck,” Gavin plunged his hands into Elijah’s long, dark hair. He must’ve been pulling with the way Elijah’s ponytail still held his locks back, but Elijah only moaned at the feeling. That vibration had Gavin damn near biting through his bottom lip, which abruptly reminded him why he’d had his fist in his mouth in the first place.

For  _ her _ part, Chloe had finally managed to get her hand around Elijah’s cock and was pumping it slowly, with expert little twists of her wrist that drove Gavin crazy. Elijah dug his nails into Gavin’s thigh at the pleasure, which prompted Gavin to pant out, “D-don’t bite me.” In response, Elijah looked up through his (entirely too long) eyelashes, and peeled his lips back until Gavin could see the ring of teeth surrounding his dick.

It should’ve been threatening. Instead, it was just hot, and Gavin cursed again.

Tension had been all that was holding Gavin together for what felt like forever by now, even in spite of regular massages from Chloe. Getting to buck his hips into his brother’s willing and eager throat felt like a reward for his patience. And so Gavin did it, again and again, until he was certain that Elijah’s voice would be a rough grumble for  _ days. _

All it took was Elijah swallowing around Gavin’s cock a few more times to get him to come. He fisted his hands, pressed in deep until he could feel Elijah’s nose against his pubic hair, and felt pleasure  _ zing _ like electricity across his body. And then Elijah was crawling up Gavin with one shaking arm braced on the back of the couch, forcing Gavin to catch him as it gave out. Chloe followed him, clumsy and a step behind, so for a second Gavin was crushed under the weight of one human and one android.

“Hey, hey,” he wheezed. “What is it?”

“I love you,” Elijah answered. And once again, he kissed the slack jawed shock right off Gavin.

They loved each other. This was something Gavin had believed for a long time, because to believe otherwise was an untenable alternative. But they didn’t  _ say _ it. Elijah’s messy kisses took on a different flavor, then; they were sweet, almost cloying.

Elijah came with his face pressed to the side of Gavin’s head, Chloe fondling his chest and dick while Gavin held onto him in a loose, unsure hug.

“Do you ever miss them? Your parents?” Elijah asked as his breathing evened out.

“Really? You’re bringing this up now?”

“Just answer, please.”

“...Don’t you mean  _ our _ parents?”

“No. Yours.”

Swallowing hard, Gavin realized what Elijah meant. It took him a long moment to say, “No. They didn’t love me when they were alive, why would they now?”

Chloe watched him speak with inscrutable eyes, her mouth set in a strange expression that would’ve been more at home on Elijah’s precious success. Very quickly, Gavin realized Elijah had fallen asleep on his chest, possibly without hearing any of what Gavin had said. He only managed to move him with Chloe’s help.

Thankfully he was so deeply unconscious that Gavin could easily pull a blood sample. He went to the school’s lab that night, grateful that his stellar grades had bought him enough favor to get after-hours access. The tests he ran would take hours to give results, but he couldn’t make himself leave and go to bed in the meantime.

This turned out to be a good thing when, eyes feeling crusty from not blinking enough and reading in the dark for too long, Gavin realized what had caused Elijah’s behavior.

Sixteen hours later, Elijah woke up with what was clearly a pounding headache. Wordlessly, Gavin touched his shoulder and held a glass of water out to him. Elijah thanked him, the frown on his face making it clear that he didn’t remember the night before very well, if at all.

“So, we’re fucked,” Gavin started as soon as Elijah had drained the glass.

“How so?”

“Thirium 310 can get people high with prolonged contact.”

“Oh, is that what happened?” Elijah looked down at the glass he held loosely in his hands, and seemed to realize how weak he was all at once. Cautiously, he put it on the coffee table. “Well, so long as we don’t use humans in the manufacturing process, I don’t see how that could be - ”

Gavin talked straight over him. “With very little refinement, it can get people high and  _ addicted.” _

“ - a problem. Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

Elijah bit his lip. Glanced at Chloe, who stood a few feet away, and then at Gavin. “No one else knows yet.”

“Nah, but it won’t take them long to figure out.”

“It might. And besides, the ingredients for addictive substances aren’t illegal. Just the substances themselves.”

“You want to go ahead with production anyway?”

Holding his hands up, palm out, Elijah tried to placate Gavin. Judging by the way his shoulders were rising up around his ears, it wasn’t working. “Listen, we’re  _ so close.  _ One more month and we’ll be  _ millionaires.  _ Don’t you see? This is the home stretch. If it took us this long to notice, then no one else will until way after androids are too commonplace to phase out.”

Abruptly, Gavin was reminded that Kamski had never really been poor. “You sound like Amanda.”

His statement had the intended effect, and Elijah flinched. “Okay. Okay, it’s not like we don’t have an ethics consultant already, with the AI concerns and all. I can - talk to her about it. If she thinks it’ll be a problem, we’ll, I guess, go back to the drawing board.”

While it wasn’t what Gavin wanted, he agreed. And while Elijah never brought it up again, when Cyberlife androids became publicly available Gavin assumed he’d gotten the all clear.

But you know what they say about assuming.

Years passed. Afterwards, Gavin would think of them as the calm before the storm. At the time, all he knew was that he was twenty, then twenty-one or two or three, and he was happy.

They did move into a penthouse like Gavin had considered all that time ago, eventually. Using their own money, even, not their parents’. Detroit flourished with the success of Cyberlife, while, paradoxically, unemployment rose around the country. This, combined with the continued silence from any and all media sources about Gavin’s involvement, meant that news of any kind was summarily banned from their apartment.

Freedom was a new sensation for Gavin. He was free to do as he wished all the time, with no classes or obsessive projects to complete, and found himself encouraging Elijah to throw charity parties on a semi-regular basis. It made Cyberlife look good, and even though Gavin often found himself trapped in stilted conversations with Amanda Stern, he was surprised to realize he liked dressing up fancy as hell just as much as going to nightclubs.

Of course, Elijah was still busy with producing new models on a fairly regular basis. This bothered Gavin less, since he’d gotten used to the company of RT403 and had no shortage of admirrers when he chose to go out.

(If RT600 and subsequent androids made him uncomfortable, no one had to know. He met the custom android only once, and found himself trapped between arousal and fear the entire time. He just couldn’t stump it, couldn’t get it to slip up and reveal its inhuman nature, and seeing the programs he’d watched be written evolve to this point was, well, a bit sexy. And a lot scary.)

Life continued, and it was, by and large, good. For all its flaws, it was good. Happy, even.

(Gavin belonged to Elijah. It became more obvious with each day he rejected all of the beautiful men and women who threw themselves at him. But that was okay, because Elijah belonged to him, too. He finally really believed that.)

Happy, right up until.

Buzzing indicated that someone wanted to be let into their apartment. Gavin pressed the button, then leaned close to the little microphone. “Hello?” He said to the two men standing beneath the security camera.

“Er, hello,” said the younger one. “Is this Gavin Reed?”

Surprise washed over Gavin, and he was glad the men didn’t have a little screen on which to watch him, too. “This is. May I ask who you are?”

“Hank Anderson,” said the same man. “I’m an officer currently investigating a case related to Red Ice. May I come in?”

Ice in Gavin’s veins. An unpleasantly familiar sensation. Metal closing in around him - but he could shake that off, just like he could easily buzz the men up.

Just like he could shoot Elijah a text, too. He opened the door for the policemen with a smile already plastered in place, practiced after years of being a college student who smoked a bit too much weed when he was still very underaged. “Hello, officers,” he said. “My brother will be here soon. Would you like something to drink?”

“No,” grunted one. The other, Hank, smiled and asked for water.

Although they tried a couple of times to get Gavin to answer questions, it wasn’t too hard to stonewall them until Elijah could arrive. Gavin got the picture they weren’t trying particularly hard. He learned more than they did, in fact; he hadn’t really known what Red Ice was, cut off from press like he’d been.

“It’s becoming a real problem,” Hank explained patiently. His partner scoffed at the understatement. “People are buying androids just to get access to a renewable source of it, and then they’re losing their jobs because of their addictions, so they’re left with a bunch of payments they can’t afford. I understand Cyberlife provides support and a lot of resources for unemployed people, and of course you didn’t  _ expect _ this to happen, but we still wanted to check up with you.”

“Of course,” Gavin said, and hoped he didn’t sound as dazed as he was. There was a shrewd look in Hank’s eyes that was at odds with his pleasant demeanor.

When Elijah arrived, Gavin could almost feel the sharp edges of twisted metal pressing against him. “I assure you, we had no idea this was a possibility,” he said in his best customer service voice. “If we notice any suspicious activity, like high-volume personal sales, as opposed to the more typical corporate ones, we’ll let you know.” At that, he clasped Gavin’s shoulder companionably, and Hank’s eyes flashed between them.

“Keep an eye out for shell corporations,” Hank cautioned. “We’ll be providing you with some manpower as well, if you’ll allow - ”

His phone started to go off. Hank frowned, apologized, and took it out of his pocket. A picture of a beautiful woman filled the screen, olive skin practically glowing. Gavin only had long enough to realize she was pregnant before Hank hit ignore. “My wife,” he explained sheepishly.

“She’s beautiful,” Gavin said, his first words since Elijah had arrived. “How far along is she?”

“Only six months.” The smile on Hank’s face was more genuine than any Gavin had seen so far, but that only confirmed his suspicion. “I don’t want my kid to have to grow up with his hometown drugged up, like I did. You two understand?”

“We’ll do everything we can to help,” Elijah assured him. “If you’d like to make an appointment…? Please understand, this visit is highly irregular, and I’m a very busy man.”

“We understand,” Hank agreed. His partner grunted. “We didn’t mean to abuse our power, my apologies. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Kamski.”

Hank firmly shook hands with Elijah, then turned to Gavin and did the same. Even though they’d had that moment of connection earlier, Gavin couldn’t help but feel that Hank was under the impression that Gavin was just a bystander here. Perhaps even bumming off of his brother’s success. The fact that he might not’ve been far off burned like gasoline.

_ Too commonplace to phase out. _ The policemen hadn’t even tried to imply that they were going to pull androids from the metaphorical shelves until this problem was solved. It was a bluff everyone knew they couldn’t follow through on.

Metal pressing inwards. Gavin couldn’t breathe through the cold and smoke.

“What’s goin’ on?” He asked Elijah, as soon as they were alone.

Elijah looked around the room suspiciously, and Gavin rolled his eyes. “Chloe, did they make any suspicious movements while they were here?”

“No.” She stepped out of the doorway of Gavin’s room, where she’d been all but hiding. “You did not give them the opportunity. The apartment is no more likely bugged now than it was before.”

Slumping onto the couch, Elijah finally relaxed out of his faux friendly posture. He looked tired, older than he was, but Gavin didn’t give him the chance to rest. “So?”

“So what?”

“Red Ice. I told you it was a possibility. How long have you known about it?”

“A couple months,” Elijah said. He didn’t look up. Gavin sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“You’re lying.”

A gulf opened between them, then. Like none Gavin had ever felt between them before. A long time ago, Chloe had said she trusted Elijah, and Gavin had used her cold logic like a shield against his doubts. Now, he felt it crumble, as he remembered once and for all who had taught her what logic meant in the first place.

“Tell me,” he said, pouring every bit of venom he felt flowing swirling in his lungs into it. Elijah flinched - and, for once in his goddamn life, did as he was told.

“When you told me about, er, my  _ reaction _ to thirium, I didn’t take it to an ethicist, or anything like that. I took it to Amanda.” This didn’t surprise Gavin, who only nodded, prompting Elijah to continue. “She pointed out something that hadn’t occurred to me. If corporations concerned with humanitarianism lose their workforce to addiction, they won’t have a choice but to switch to androids. Many of them only use their morals as a way to drive sales, anyway. So, if we can drive demand up, we’ll be able to produce more complicated models very quickly. Our AI is evolving at a rate I couldn’t have dreamed of. I think they might even be capable of free will.”

By the end of this little speech, Gavin felt sick.

“I need to go,” he said.

“Gavin? I’m sorry, do you want to sit down?”

“No. I need to get out, just - just for a bit.”

“Gavin, wait - ”

It took actual effort not to snap his teeth at Elijah when he grabbed Gavin’s wrist. Elijah must’ve seen the violence in his eyes, because he released him almost instantly. “Let. Me. Go.” Gavin’s order was ground out with a locked jaw.

Elijah let him go, in more ways than one.

By the time Gavin was calm enough to return home, he’d formulated a plan, and the snow had soaked a chill into him he didn’t think he’d ever shake off.

It took a long time for Kamski to let his guard down again, especially since Gavin couldn’t bring himself to lie about how betrayed he felt. But when Kamski whispered, “I can’t tell them how involved you are. Right now, if I get caught, I’m the only one that goes down,” Gavin was still able to read between the lines.

“I don’t want to lose you either,” Gavin murmured back, and he felt Kamski stop thrusting just to hold him, trembling lightly, and knew that he’d said the right thing.

It didn’t matter how true that statement was, or how flayed bare Gavin felt saying it. It did its job, and the very next day Gavin found himself sitting beside Kamski’s laptop, accidentally left out when he rushed to Amanda’s side for some short-notice meeting.

Time, as it turned out, had done nothing to diminish Gavin’s ability to guess Elijah’s passwords. He almost wished it had, but by the time he’d found the files he was looking for, he knew it was too late for them either way. He printed them off with a sense of horrible finality, censored them carefully, and then photocopied the censored versions. Burning the originals was, in comparison, much easier.

Calling a certain police officer was much, much harder.

Hank was surprised to be contacted, but seemed happy enough to meet up with Gavin, at least on the phone. In practice, Gavin expected him to be tense in the dive bar he selected to meet in.

He was pleasantly surprised that Hank blended in as well as he did. “Slumming it, aren’t you?” Hank teased calmly, waving the bartender over to order a beer.

“Don’t play coy. You know I’m adopted.”

Hank toasted to him for that comeback. They drank side by side for a while, silent, until Gavin held up the bulging envelope he’d had in his coat. “I wanna make one thing clear,” he said. “This research was too well encrypted for me to know which employee it came from, but I know for a fact my brother wasn’t aware of it.”

“You  _ do _ know that he brags about his IQ all the time, right? Ignorance ain’t really the best defense in this scenario.”

_ “He didn’t know about it,” _ Gavin rasped. Then took a big swig for good measure.

For a while longer, they didn’t say anything. Hank held his hand out for the envelope, which Gavin handed over somewhat reluctantly. “He didn’t know,” he repeated one more time. “Because the wording in this - Elijah wouldn’t tolerate it. He knows what it was like for me, when I was little. He wouldn’t let some rich fuckwad with a silver spoon up his ass manipulate poor people like this. Take advantage of them…”

_ You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself, _ Hank didn’t say. “You know, if this freeloader thing doesn’t work out for you, you might make a damn fine cop. You’ve already got a flair for the theatrics of it,” he did say.

Gaping, Gavin watched him leave, and wondered what his life even was.

For the first time in years, a news anchor’s voice filled their apartment that night. Elijah watched as they talked about the gigantic Red Ice bust that’d just taken place, headed by Hank Anderson, a rising star in Detroit’s police force. All thanks to an anonymous tip. To Gavin, it felt like the news coverage took forever and not nearly long enough all at once.

When it was over Elijah turned to him. To Gavin’s shock, there was a shine in his eyes. “It’s okay, isn’t it?” He said, and hugged Gavin tightly. “So long as you’re important to me, you don’t need to be important to the world. And - you’re still important to me.”

“You’re important to me, too,” Gavin said. His breathing had eased, somewhat.

Not all the way, though. He worried it never would again.

Those worries were proven real a week later. At another charity event, planned for months and not advisable to cancel, now of all times. Like often happened at these things, Gavin found himself standing against the wall while Elijah talked to dazzlingly beautiful women dripping with jewels and showed off the latest Chloe on his arm.

And, like occasionally happened when Gavin made himself into a wallflower, Amanda found him. “Ms. Stern,” he said with barely concealed hatred.

“Mr. Reed,” she replied, more considering than angry. “My congratulations. I heard you’d recently been given a job offer by our illustrious officers of the law.”

“Oh? Who told you that?”

“A little bird,” she replied dismissively.

_ Maybe a shrew, _ Gavin thought to himself.

“Will you take the job?”

“I don’t know,” Gavin said. “I’ve started thinking that perhaps I shouldn’t be working with a classist bitch.”

So even and calm had been his tone, that it took a second for the insult to sink in. When it did, however, he could see her trying to hold back her disdain. “Working with us? I wasn’t aware you had anything of worth to contribute here.”

“So you don’t deny the other part of my statement?”

“On the contrary, I consider  _ that _ part almost a compliment.”

“Do you think my brother would agree with you?”

This actually got Amanda to pause and consider her words. “Would you believe me if I told you I’d convinced him of my point of view, or that reasoning had convinced him long ago?”

“No,” Gavin said frankly. He always did his best when he could be frank.

“In that case, I suppose I must be honest. He doesn’t care much either way. So long as he can continue to study and build his toys, he’s happy.”

Gavin knew both that she was being honest and that she wasn’t entirely right. From her point of view, it was obvious, in the way Kamski’s eyes crinkled with pride each time he looked at the android he’d brought with him. His plus one, always.

But also… Kamski didn’t need much to tinker. A crappy apartment, a few sales, they could carry him through just fine. Luxury was something he took for granted more because he’d never particularly wanted it than because he’d been born into it. Gavin, though, was different. Elijah knew that. And while he might not worry about the lack of safety net he’d accepted when he’d moved away from their parents, Gavin would, and Elijah wanted to eliminate all of Gavin’s worries. If only the strength of his desire had corresponded to his abilities.

It came both as an earthshaking revelation and no surprise at all to Gavin when he realized his mind was already made up.

“You know, I do think I’ll take that job.”

“Such a shame,” Amanda replied sarcastically. “I’m dying, you know. Elijah will be all alone in the company - and, quite frankly, I don’t think a deviant like him can handle that.”

_ Deviant.  _ What a carefully chosen word. It hurt like a knife in the back, but Gavin only nodded, and didn’t change his mind one bit.

What happened next, Gavin mostly heard about second and third hand. Elijah left him twenty two voicemails in three days, and abruptly cut off after that. He moved out of Detroit, to a modern mansion Gavin remembered him mentioning he wanted when it’d been built. Gavin had said that it was an open plan monstrosity. Elijah had laughed, and shown him how it could produce triple the electricity anyone living inside could possibly use. Gavin had rolled his eyes.

The security system hadn’t come with the house, but Gavin certainly recognized it when he heard it described. Almost comically overkill, and even more so when Elijah stepped down as CEO and found himself with fewer enemies than ever.

And then Elijah cut himself off the grid entirely, “No information goes in or out of that house, not using the internet,” and worry began to creep into Gavin’s mind. Worry he couldn’t let himself act on, because if he saw Elijah’s face again, even once, he knew it would destroy every bit of independence he’d forced himself into. He’d never leave that house again, just like Elijah.

Even without the finality of destruction, Gavin became snappier and more jaded. Especially when placed on cases with androids - they just got creepier and creepier, more and more human, until even he had trouble telling the difference sometimes.

Hank’s son was born. And then he died.

Life moved on, whether or not Gavin was ready for it. He and Hank drank together, sometimes, but Gavin was uncomfortable with quite how much booze Hank was downing and Hank was uncomfortable with quite how much Gavin complained about androids, so that died down fairly quickly. Working with the man may have been a mistake.

Androids began killing humans. Androids began asking for rights. Androids  _ received  _ some of those rights.

Suddenly, Elijah’s paranoia seemed a bit more justified.

Gavin fully expected to never hear from his brother again. Perhaps it was that expectation itself which led to Chloe appearing on his shithole house’s doorstep, an umbrella in hand but not in use. He tried to slam the door in her face.

She didn’t let him.

“I think it’s well past time you and Elijah had a talk,” she said calmly.

“You can’t think,” Gavin spat back.

“Don’t be childish. I’m afraid I’m hardly the same Chloe as the one you were acquainted with so long ago, and underestimating me would be to your detriment.”

It sounded enough like a threat to have Gavin trembling, and  _ that  _ had him furious enough at himself to do as she said, just to prove he wasn’t scared.

Driving to the house was strange for a number of reasons. For one, it’d been years since he felt someone watch him with the level of scrutiny that Chloe was using, in spite of the fact that her programming should’ve kept her from intentionally making him uncomfortable. For another, he’d never seen the house from this angle.

Chloe walked him through the eerily empty house, until she reached a dining room with an oversized table. At either end, a single place had been set, with the chair in the middle devoid of an accompanying plate. “Wait here,” she ordered, pointing at one of the places with food.

“You’re not supposed to order me around,” Gavin griped, even as he sat down.

The ticking of his watch felt louder than any drums could dream of being.

“What’s this about?” Came Elijah’s voice, wandering through the empty doorway. “Chloe, I was working on - oh.”

“Hey, Kamski,” Gavin said stiffly.

“Hello,” Elijah replied.

He sat down, but seemed as reluctant to start eating as Gavin was. Chloe sat between them, impassive in a way that made Gavin think of her as determined, except  _ she couldn’t feel emotion. It wasn’t real, wasn’t real, wasn’t. _

“So,” he tried. “How’ve you been.”

“Well.” Kamski picked up his fork and looked at it with more concentration than it deserved. “You?”

“Same,” Gavin agreed.

Silence. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

“Elijah,” Chloe said warningly.

Huffing a breath through his nose, Elijah said nothing. Tick, tock. Gavin couldn’t look away from him. Years had matured his face, made him wear the tiredness well. Guilt tried to choke him.

From so far away Gavin caught a whiff of what Elijah smelled like. No more sweat, or oil, or copper, or ozone. Chlorine covered it all up.

“God, just spit it out!”

Head snapping upwards so fast Gavin winced, he finally made eye contact. It hurt, but it felt like lancing an infected wound. A draining of all the poison and ice and  _ metal _ Gavin had built up inside himself over the years.

“Did I do it?” Elijah asked.

“Do what?”

“Are they people to you, now?”

“No,” Gavin said. And whether or not that made him a bad person, it was the truth. Sometimes he still saw those little blue LEDs, and remembered legs and arms strewn about his bedroom. Sometimes he wished the world had stopped when he’d been nine, and had a brand new brother. Or when he’d been eighteen and thought nothing in the world could hurt him if Elijah was on his side. Or, well, anything but this.

“Will you let me convince you otherwise?”

Like so much of what Elijah had asked Gavin in the past, it was more than what it appeared on the surface. The guilt reached up out of Gavin’s gut for his throat once again. He didn’t know how to keep it down anymore.

He made the decision he made partially because of that. And partially because, after all this time, he could look at Elijah and feel - so much, love and regret and lust and anger, and it still didn’t  _ destroy  _ him. He didn’t need to be a prisoner here. And if that could change, without his even noticing, maybe other things could, too.

“Okay.”  _ One more try, _ Gavin told himself.  _ One more try. _ “Okay.”


End file.
